Sir Geoff Hurst reveals wife Judith has never forgiven him for not inviting her to 1966 World Cup final banquet

SIR GEOFF HURST has joked that wife Judith has never forgiven him for not being invited to the 1966 World Cup final banquet.

England’s hat-trick hero was one of five of the final XI who returned yesterday to London’s Royal Garden Hotel — venue of the official celebrations 50 years ago.

And the former West Ham star said: “We had a banquet here for all four of the semi-finalists’ teams — and uninvited were our wives!

“They were in a small ante-room somewhere else in the hotel and — I have only heard this recently — they were given a gift . . . a pair of scissors!

“As you husbands know, when your wife isn’t invited to a function she thought she should have been at, she reminds you for the next 50 years!”

Describing the scenes in Kensington that night, as thousands of fans celebrated outside the hotel and the squad paraded the trophy on the balcony, Hurst added: “It was a magnificent occasion. The images from being on the balcony overlooking the high street were something that lives with you.

“It was absolutely packed with people and cars weren’t moving.”

The Three Lions legend recalled how he and several team-mates hit the town with their wives after the official banquet.

He said: “Nothing was really organised for later that night.

“The Playboy Club had invited us out. I decided, ‘It’s Saturday night, we’re in London, we’ve played a game of football, I’ve got to organise something’.  Danny La Rue, the female impersonator, had a club in Hanover Square and I’d been there a few months before. It was good entertainment and Ronnie Corbett was working there, too.

“So I arranged it with a few of the lads. Alan Ball came along, Martin Peters and John Connelly. So there are lovely memories of us enjoying the night.”

Hurst, reflecting on his controversial second goal and whether the ball crossed the line, added: “It’s probably the most talked-about goal in football history, the most disputed goal. Even today, nothing can prove it conclusively.

“What you have to understand is that it’s 2-2 in the World Cup final, it’s only your eighth cap for England and you want to believe more than your life is worth that it IS in. That belief has never left me.”

On England’s failure to win another major tournament in the half-century since, he said: “At the time you are not really aware of the magnitude of the occasion. You are in a bubble.

“Certainly, I wouldn’t have thought we would have been sitting here 50 years on not having won it again.

“We were close in ’90 and in the Euros here in ’96, but I don’t think at the time we really realised what we were achieving.”